Britain’s "Empire Magazine" has named the ten worst movie accents and dumps Sean Connery in the Number One spot for “The Untouchables”. This is an inherently funny list which brings countless other candidates to mind and provokes a number of questions:

1) If you’re Sean Connery and you have, by far, the world’s coolest natural accent, the Scottish burr, why on Earth would you want to change it…no matter how much they’re paying you?

2) If you are going to pick on Connery though, “The Untouchables” isn’t the best place to start. This may sound like heresy (I remember Mike Myers’ “If-It’s-Not-Scottish-It’s-Crap!” character pummeling a visitor to his store for this offense), but most Americans cannot readily tell the difference between an Irish and a Scottish accent. Connery is more convincing as an Irish cop than as, say, Mulay Achmed Mohammed el-Raisuli the Magnificent in “The Wind and the Lion”.

3) Speaking of Irish accents, they are probably the most frequently mangled in all of cinema. Relatively recent examples include Tom Cruise as well as the rest of the cast of “Far and Away” and Richard Gere in “The Jackal”.

4) Did anyone see Kevin Costner in “Thirteen Days”? Enough said.

5) Alas, the actor who played Roman Moroni in “Johnny Dangerously” is sadly omitted from this list. I suppose intentionally bad accents do not qualify.

6) Finally, I never saw it, but I can only assume by his absence here that John Wayne made no effort whatsoever to attempt an accent when he (ahem) played Genghis Khan in “The Conqueror”.